A Beautiful Tune
by SweetDeamon
Summary: "I'm...not coming." he said, reaching to shove his hands deep into his pockets. "On the mission. With you." Tonks stared at him in confusion. "Why not?" she asked, grip upon the cloak in her hand going limp. Remus struggled to come up with a convincing lie. "Because I...I..." Because I'm dying. Because you've struck me dead in the heart. (RLNT. NTCW.0


_Note: A rather rushed one shot because I go stuck with everything else! :-)_

_I forbid Trixie to read it! ;-)_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter._

**A Beautiful Tune**

It had been a full week since the most blissful evening of his life, and Remus Lupin was beginning to think that he had never felt lower.

It had been his first Order mission accompanied by Tonks since the incident in the Hospital Wing some months earlier, which Remus had supposed strange given how often they had managed to land missions together before it had happened. These days that seemed to never happen at all. He strongly suspected that this wasn't a coincidence, but wasn't entirely sure why. But that one mission last week had been better than all the rest. They had spent it talking about perfectly normal couple-like things, such as when they both had spare time to see each other again, what they'd do with that time and did he realise that they had been together for precisely three months, she knew because she'd been counting. There had been laughter and joking and smiles and Remus had supposed there was something faintly ridiculous about standing to attention outside a Death Eater's house under an invisibility cloak, wand in one hand and her hand in the other.

They had apparated back to her house afterwards and he'd made a show of walking her to the front door to kiss her goodnight...

He'd woken up the next morning to find himself lying upon the sofa in her sitting room, arms wrapped tightly around her as she lay fast asleep with her head upon his chest. He'd allowed himself a few blissful minutes of acknowledging that he'd never had a mission go so swimmingly in all his years, before he'd caught sight of the clock upon the wall and realised that they were already late for that morning's Order meeting. The bubble had burst in a spectacular fashion when he had shaken her awake. There had been muttered swearing and a mad fumbling rush for discarded clothes and she'd stubbed her toe on the way out of the door.

Their tardiness had served to make the pair of them distinctly irritable, but her mood had lasted only as long as it had taken them to step through the back door and into the Burrow's kitchen. She'd taken one look at the unexpected face stood over by the oven and had instantly brightened.

Literally.

"CHARLIE!" she'd exclaimed, crossing the kitchen at a full run in order to throw her arms around the wizard in question, and Charlie Weasley had grinned broadly and returned a crushingly tight hug.

"Merlin, Tonks!" he exclaimed as Remus had murmured apologies on her behalf to the others gathered around the kitchen table, "It's been bloody ages! Where the hell were you last time I was over?!"

"Some of us have proper jobs with proper long hours, you know." Tonks had told him, voice muffled by his shoulder, and then she drew back and asked: "How long are you here for this time?"

"Um..." Charlie had began, only for Moody to bang an impatient fist upon the table and demand:  
"You're late enough as it is, Nymphadora! Sit down, will you?! We haven't got all day!"

She'd sat at Charlie's side at the other end of the table and Remus had soon discovered that she was so distracted by her school friend's presence that she failed to contribute a single word when he stood up to give a summary of their mission the night beforehand. He'd gone with Moody and Kingsley straight after the meeting on another mission, leaving her still chattering so intently with Charlie that he'd not bothered to interrupt to say goodbye.

They hadn't spent a single hour alone together since. They had spent long hours at the Burrow. He had sat planning future missions with Moody and a few others. Tonks contributed rarely and seemed to spend most of her time sat with Charlie in the sitting room. There was laughter and joking and smiles.

And, after a few days, the odd bit of flirting and a wink every once in a while and he'd told himself not to feel jealous in the slightest but had failed miserably. He took comfort in her hand always brushing his back as she walked past him, of the absentminded smiles she sometimes shot in his direction, of her _I'll see you tomorrow, Sweetheart_, and her _Be careful out there, won't you love?_

Overall he decided he was alright with it all, that it was harmless, meaningless, that ultimately it didn't worry him. And then they'd landed another mission together and he'd thought things would be just as glorious as last time...

They had agreed to meet at the Burrow, where she had been finalising their plans with Moody after dinner, and he had promptly regretted the entire thing. Finding Molly and Arthur and a few others outside enjoying the last of the good weather, Remus had found the kitchen empty.

Then he'd heard voices coming from sitting room. The door had been open a fraction and he'd been about to push it open further when he'd spotted the two people inside and their conversation had made his heart stop dead in his chest.

Charlie, stood before the fireplace, his arms folded firmly across his chest, frowned deeply and mumbled:

"Oh Tonks! I don't know..."

"Please, Charlie!" Tonks exclaimed, reaching to grasp hold of his arms, attempting to unfold them, gazing up at the red haired wizard imploringly. "Please!"

"I...I really don't think..."

"Don't you want to?!"

"Of course I want to! Bloody hell, Tonks, it'd be...it'd be great, obviously!" Charlie finally consented to allowing her to unfold his arms and he reached to rest his hands upon her shoulders.

"I can't think of anything I'd like better right now." he said seriously, gaze upon the witch suddenly quite intense. "You know that, don't you? But it's tricky, you know it's tricky...and if I don't hurry up I'll...I'll miss my port key..."

"Please don't leave!" Tonks reached to grasp hold of the front of his robes, grasping fistfuls of material in frustration and Remus felt abruptly dizzy when Charlie huffed and told her:

"For Merlin's sake, Tonks! You've not even plucked up the courage to broach the subject with Remus yet! I can't hang around forever, you know! And what if it doesn't go the way you think it will?! What then?"

"He'll...we'll...it'll be alright!"

"You think I can just sit around here waiting?"

"Of course not! It won't be like that! I'll...I'll talk to him now!"

"Yeah right, you've been pussy footing around it all week..."

"We've a watch together at the Crabbe place! I'll come out with it as soon as we get there! I will!"

"You want to do it whilst standing watch at the Crabbe place?! Bloody hell..."

"Well...well it's as good a place as any!"

"I thought you'd already spoken to him! You owled so many times, Tonks, I thought it'd all be sorted by the time I got here!"

Tonks hung her head, sighing heavily.

"I'm...I'm sorry..." she said, shaking her head. "It's...it's just not that easy! I mean we've been together for three months...that's...you know..."

"I know." Charlie agreed, beginning to calm down a little, and at her abrupt gloom he reached to slip a thumb under her chin, raising her head to look at him. "Come on, Nymphadora! Where's your Gryffindor courage?" He gave an exaggerated frown before exclaimed: "Oh...right...!"

Tonks punched him lightly in the ribs.

"Git!" she accused, and Charlie smirked, backing off a few steps as she turned to head for the door.

"And yet here you are pleading with me!" he laughed, and she shot him a dark look over her shoulder before heading out into the kitchen.

Upon seeing her stood in the doorway, smiling rather sheepishly at him, Remus had instantly panicked.

"I...I'm not...I'm not coming." he'd announced as she got to pull on her cloak.

Tonks paused, the garment midway around her shoulders.

"What?" she said, turning to offer him a bemused look, and Remus felt a lump in his throat.

It was cowardly of him, he knew that for sure. But he couldn't help it. He wasn't ready, he hadn't had time to think about what was happening, hadn't been able to comprehend it...

Comprehend losing her.

Comprehend losing her to somebody else.

Because that was what was about to happen, he was sure of it, she was going to calmly stand huddled under that invisibility cloak at his side and instead of joking and holding hands she was going to turn around and tell him that it was all over.

His life was all over.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't face her. Not now. Not yet...probably not ever...

And he didn't care how pathetic and cowardly it was to put off the inevitable. None of that even mattered. All that mattered was that he was being plunged into icy darkness and the numbness was already leaving him to feel dead inside...

"I'm...not coming." he said, reaching to shove his hands deep into his pockets. "On the mission. With you."

Tonks stared at him in confusion.

"Why not?" she asked, grip upon the cloak in her hand going limp.

Remus struggled to come up with a convincing lie.

"Because I...I..."

Because I'm dying. Because you've struck me dead in the heart and...

"I'm sick."

It was a good lie. Because it probably wasn't one. He felt sick to the stomach and he found himself staring at her chin where Charlie's fingers had brushed against her skin mere moment earlier and if he thought about it hard enough the panic would make him vomit...

"Sick?" Tonks said, dropping the cloak to the floor and closing the gap between them in a few short strides that made him forget to breathe. "Since when? You were fine earlier..."

_You were mine earlier._

"...have you got a temperature?" She reached to press a hand to his brow with a frown and he wanted to jerk away from her but he seemed to be having trouble persuading his limbs to move.

"I...need to go to bed. You'll have to...to find somebody else to go with you." he told her weakly, and her hand came to press against his cheek and she looked disappointed.

"That's a shame." she told him sadly. "I was looking forward to it, you know. Just you and me for a change!"

Her bare-faced lie was like a punch in the stomach. Remus felt rather as if she were secretly mocking him.

"Take...take Charlie with you! I'm going to lie down." he mumbled, and with that he finally persuaded himself to move.

He fled upstairs without so much as a backwards glance at her, ignoring her calling something after him, and had gone to collapse upon the first bed he came across.

He'd lay upon the bed, staring up at the ceiling blankly for what felt like an age, the world collapsing in on him until the weight upon his chest was suffocating.

He closed his eyes and gave up breathing.

He awoke hours later to find a heart-shaped face leaning over him, dark eyes looking down at him scrutinisingly.

"Wotcher, Sweetheart." Tonks whispered, reaching to brush a stray strand of hair from his eyes. He blinked through the darkness at her, the clock upon the wall over her shoulder suggesting it was nearly three o'clock in the morning. "How're you feeling?"

Sleep had left him feeling oddly calmer about his fate. He managed an awkward shrug.

"Well hurry up and feel better, eh?" she said, and he heard the distinct thud of discarded boots upon the floorboards as she pulled them from her feet. "I was bored witless without you!"

"Were you?" he asked dully, and she shuffled down upon the narrow mattress until she could curl up next to him.

"Of course I was!" she told him, leaning to brush a kiss to his jaw. "And anyway..." she paused to yawn widely as he chewed pensively upon his lip. "...there's something we need to talk about, it's important..."

"I don't want to talk about it." Remus confessed miserably.

"What?"

"I know what you're going to say. I heard you talking to Charlie..."

Tonks flinched.

"You did?"

"Yes."

"Well...that's not really...how I wanted you to hear..."

"No, I imagine it wasn't."

There was a long pause before Tonks sighed heavily, propping her head up upon an elbow so that she could look down at him.

"Well this is nothing like it should be." she confessed, sounding rather awkward. "But I suppose it's done now and when it comes to us nothing ever is how it should be, is it? What...what do you think about it?"

Remus stared at her in bemusement.

Her blasé attitude was quite possibly the most hurtful thing he had ever experienced in his life.

How could she?! How could she sit there and casually ask him what he thought about her breaking his heart and waltzing off into the sunset with precisely the sort of person she had sworn wasn't who she wanted a mere month earlier?!

"I think it's quite possibly the most dreadful thing I've ever heard in my entire life, Tonks." he told her, failing to suppress his anger, and he felt yet more angry when she looked utterly distraught at his thoughts on the matter.

He felt quite unmoved when she promptly burst into tears, scrambling to sit up so that she could put some distance between the two of them.

"How can...can you say that?!" she cried, reaching to grasp fistful of abruptly grey hair in agitation, and he very nearly laughed to ask:

"Were you expecting me to say something else?!"

"YES!" she cried, eyes widening as tears streamed down her cheeks. She got to her feet so that she could turn her back on him, positively trembling in distress as she threw her arms up into the air in frustration and shouted: "SWEET MERLIN, REMUS! HOW CAN YOU BE SO...SO INSENSITIVE?!"

"Insensitive?" Remus echoed, scrambling to sit up, his head spinning at how wildly absurd her whole attitude was, and she spun back around to face him, her hands balling into tight fists as she shrieked:

"YES! INSENSITIVE! IS IT REALLY THAT AWFUL?! IS THE...THE IDEA OF...OF MARRYING ME REALLY THAT DREADFUL TO YOU?!"

Remus felt as if he had just been doused in icy water.

There was a long, shocked silence.

"M...marrying you?" he managed to utter when he could find his voice.

Tonks stood, hugging her arms tightly around herself, her shoulders hunched and her gaze upon her shocks as she gave a dejected sniff and whispered:

"Yes! Obviously..."

"That...that wasn't...obvious..." Remus began, the fog in his head beginning to clear, but Tonks didn't seem to hear him.

"I thought...I thought we...I know we've not been together that long but I thought it didn't matter because...well I thought you loved me!" she whispered, reaching to swipe a sleeve furiously across her eyes, and before she could continue to complain about his no doubt wildly inappropriate response to her question Remus hurriedly explained:

"I thought you loved Charlie."

Tonks abruptly stopped crying.

"Ch...Charlie?" she repeated, sounding bordering on offended, and Remus felt his face blossoming with colour.

"Well yes..." he mumbled, reaching to scratch awkwardly at the back of his neck. "I heard you both talking...you wanted him to...to stay here and not go back to Romania, and he...he came back because you...you told him you were going to...to break up with...with me..."

"What?" Tonks took a few stumbling steps forward until she could reach to grasp the werewolf by the arm as if she was afraid he was about to leap out of bed and run for the hills. "No! No, Remus! Charlie's come because I told him I was going to propose to you! And I wanted him at our wedding reception! Because he's a very good friend! And I...I thought you'd say yes when I asked and we'd...we'd have to do it quickly and...and not cause a fuss! And for the love of Merlin...! This is...this is not what it was meant to be like!" The Auror dropped down to perch upon the end of the bed, shoulders slumped. "I...it's taken me ages to...to pluck up the courage to ask you! Because I was worried I'd...you know...say it wrong or say something stupid and it's...it's important to...to get it right!"

There was a long silence as Remus scrambled around his mind in an attempt to make sense of what had just been said.

She was still his.

She had always been his, he'd just been too stupid to see it, in fact she wasn't just his now, she wanted to be his forever...

What was it about declaring something as wonderful and mind-boggling as that which she thought could go wrong? What was it about telling him the most glorious and overwhelming thing in the world that could ever be anything but perfect?

Even in this utterly messed up and heart-wrenching sequence of misunderstandings, it was simply perfect.

The idea of marrying Tonks.

He wanted to explain all of this to her, but he didn't know quite how to explain the magnitude of the elation roaring through his insides and making his heart thump and his mind race and he couldn't think of anything except...

He wanted to hold her. Bury his face in her hair and breathe her in, tangle his hands in her hair and kiss her in the vain hope that she might get even the faintest hint of just how he felt at that moment, but before he could reach to pull her closer to him she wondered:

"Can I...can we start again? Can I ask you...properly?" She made to sit up straighter and turn to face him, her expression deadly serious, and she drew breath to speak, only for him to say:

"No. You can't."

"W...why not?" she asked, sounding a little deflated, only for him to pull her towards him, hugging her tightly.

"Because," he whispered, his face buried in her hair, making him pause to breathe in deeply, his hands reaching to smooth the mousy strands at the nape of her neck. "I don't want to wait a single second more to give you an answer."

Tonks reached to slide her arms tightly around him and he could feel her heart thumping against his chest.

"And you want to marry me! How on earth could you say that wrong even if you tried? I've never heard anything more like music to my ears and it's not like the racket the Weird Sisters play, it's a breathtakingly beautiful tune..." He shifted until their foreheads were pressed together and regarded her for a long moment...

Merlin, they really hadn't been doing this for very long. They hadn't been together anything like long enough to consider marriage. It was all happening in such a rush and somebody ought to slam on the brakes before they crashed and burned...

But it would be the most glorious fire. It would paint the world in such a serene glow that in the end, no matter how it all panned out, Remus wasn't sure he'd ever bring himself to regret it. How could he regret it, a whirlwind or not? Whirlwinds were unstoppable once you were caught up in them. And he'd been caught up in her from the word hello...

"I'd marry you in a heartbeat, Dora." he confessed, and she grinned and told him:

"That's pretty fast. Because right now my heart's racing!"

And he was about to admit that his heart was racing too, but before he could say a word she leant to kiss him, mumbling:

"That's a promise for an I Do, is it?"

And as they sunk back against the pillows Remus sucked in a deep breath between kisses to whisper:

"I do, I do, I do!"

And so it was that at four o'clock in the morning Charlie Weasley's dreams of dragon riding Quidditch players were abruptly interrupted by the sound of his bedroom door bursting open, jolting the Dragon Keeper awake. He felt an instinctive urge to raise his arms to shield his face as a sudden weight landed with a creak upon the bed beside him. A pair of hands reached to yank his arms down from his face and as he blinked groggily at his night time visitor he felt somewhat blinded by the bright pink of her hair as Tonks gave a small squeak of excitement as she half-shouted:

"I DID IT, CHARLIE! I ASKED HIM!"

"And...?" Charlie said as he heard sudden footsteps from the floor above, the witch's raised voice apparently loud enough to wake half the house with a start.

Tonks seemed so overwhelmed by her excitement that it took her almost a full minute to fling her arms triumphantly up into the air to declare:

"HE SAID YES!"

Charlie was about to make a suitably triumphant declaration of his own when her enthusiasm caused her to unbalanced and with a gasp she toppled forward, slipping on the sheets to fall bodily atop her friend, knocking the air from his lungs...

At that precise moment Charlie heard the door being flung open again and he struggled to hastily push the witch off of him just in time to catch sight of his parents stood in the doorway, his father in a crumpled pair of pyjamas and his mother in a dressing gown she had apparently donned within a split second of waking up.

"Um..." Charlie began as they stared into the room, expressions utterly baffled and downright shocked as Tonks struggled to scramble up into a sitting position.

"What in Merlin's name is going on?!" Molly demanded, gesturing wildly around the room at pretty much everything except her son and his visitor, and Charlie was sure they had the wrong end of the stick, only for their mouthes to drop open a little in surprise when, apparently entirely unconcerned by her misadventure, Tonks turned to grin broadly at them and announced:

"WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!"

Charlie felt a groan of resignation rise in his throat as his parents both turned to stare at him, and the dragon keeper was forced to confess:

"This...isn't what it looks like...!"

And behind his parents he heard more footsteps coming to a halt and as Remus' face appeared over Molly's shoulder Charlie rather wished a black hole would open up and swallow him as beside him Tonks dissolved into hysterical laughter and her fiance grinned and confessed:

"I sincerely hope not!"

**Finish.**


End file.
